Posts Tagged ‘dawkins’

Around two years ago a vast Creation Museum opened in Petersburg, Kentucky.

By all accounts a quick wander around the grounds has more in common with a theme park than a traditional museum. Weighing in at almost twice the size of our Natural History Museum, the grounds boast animatronic dinosaurs, a special effects cinema, a planetarium and a petting zoo. All in all the museum cost no less than £17m to construct.

Founded by a Christian ministry, Answers in Genesis, the museum seeks to impart various nuggets of information, such as:

Genesis is literally true

The universe was created by direct acts of God over six days

The universe is less than 10,000 years old

"Apparently some of them were even smart enough to open doors," said the dinosaur

But it’s interesting to note that this deliberately “non-scientific” museum makes use of a huge array of technologies that science has created in order to attempt to validate its points. Electricity, robotics, photography, telecommunications and many more all play a part in making this museum seem plausible.

It could be argued that they are not rejecting some scientific discoveries (like technology) – only evolutionary or historical discoveries. But all of this is really one package. For example, broadly speaking the same scientific knowledge that allows us to build nuclear reactors is also the basis for carbon-dating…

But then, the first result from a Google search for the age of the earth according to carbon-dating reveals…

This answer from Answers in Genesis. And with SEO like that, how could they be wrong?

As a follow up to my previous entry on viral marketing, I have been looking for natural examples of the viral effect in society. It turns out that many of these have already been identified and are called “memes”.

A meme consists of any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that gets transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. Memes propagate themselves and can move through a culture just like a viral campaign. The more beneficial a meme is to society the more it spreads, the less beneficial the more quickly it dies out.

Dances, cultural traditions, catch-phrases and even well-known theories are all examples of memes. Some memes were very useful (e.g. wearing animal skins) whilst others served no purpose at all, but were copied anyway (e.g. putting feathers in one’s hair).

But perhaps the most consistently successful type of meme is religion (or perhaps religion itself is just a collection of memes…) Religion can unify your society, it can make your armies fight harder, it may reduce the chance of civil unrest (how many rulers have been ordained by God?), it can lower the chances of spreading disease (e.g. no sex before marriage), it can reduce crime, it can provide a basic code of laws and so on. Little wonder more successful cultures had religion!

So next time you want to make a viral that works, take a look back through history. Viral marketing is as old as we are. For now the tip seems to be “make your viral as beneficial as possible”, but this has also shown me that humans have evolved to copy and pass on information. We have literally evolved to be susceptible to viral marketing!

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